Name: Chance The Rapper Talks Dave Chappelle
Uploaded: 2025-10-31T15:00:56.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chance The Rapper Talks Dave Chappelle' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-31. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chance The Rapper Talks Dave Chappelle' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-31. Transcript available.

So you got in trouble, and then you wrote your first mixtape, 18 years old.
Yeah, I think I was, yeah, I was 18.
I started at the end of my high school, senior year of high school, and put it
out, I think
when I was 19.
Yeah.
And yeah, like, the influence of school and me feeling so dissociated from like,
the building
or the idea of work or the idea of these adults being teachers and not just
being regular
niggas that hated us.
They're losers.
Yeah.
Let's be honest, teachers are losers.
So just let the record show, I don't think I'm losers, you know what I mean?
They are losers.
Some of these guys we had, phew.
Oh yeah, sorry, no, my bad.
Yeah, yeah.
My teachers was losers, for sure.
They were losers.
I thought you meant teachers in general.
Back in the day, back in the, I'm talking back in the day.
I'm talking in...
Uh-huh.
1943, 1944.
In antiquity.
Okay.
I'm talking about, like, fucking...
Stone Age.
I'm talking about...
Hmm.
I love saying I'm talking about, and you ad-lib, it sounds like a song to me.
Go ahead.
This is a track right now.
I was going to say, like, Aristotle.
Okay.
Pedophile.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let's twist.
Let's make a pivot.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Um...
Let's go...
He was a teacher though, right?
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Okay.
Because of Miletus, right?
They...
What used to happen was one person would teach one person, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So you get that one-on-one education.
A mentor.
And typically it's your father, but yes, or you go to a mentor who's a
philosopher, and
they teach you one-on-one what the game is.
Yeah.
And now we have a standardized education where we send 30 random kids into a
room to sit
all day with an adult who just got a divorce.
Yeah.
And so they owe nothing to this child.
They don't think that, you know, and it's not this child, it's 30 childs, and
next year
they'll have another 30 child.
So it's like, and I should be saying children, but you gave me this.
Childs, whatever.
Come on, dude.
The point that I'm making though is like, it's a, I think the issues with
teachers
are that they're overwhelmed and they're human beings.
So when they're, you know what I'm saying?
Getting fucking, uh, fucking markers thrown at them and TikTok challenged all
over, like,
they all, at a certain point they like, they check out.
And I think that, you know, back in the day, post Stone Age, pre-1941, there
was a lot
more, um, you know, like direct education or at least like more sizable.
To just be with one adult guy wearing a fucking toga, that'd be annoying.
No, that would be whack.
That would be whack.
I want girls to be there and kind of try to be funny.
You could have a girl mentor, girls could teach you too.
No, but you're not, but you can't, I mean, I guess, what I'm saying is, is like
a school
socializes you, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The fun part about school is that you like, you're terrified to get beat, like
get called
gay when you're in sixth grade.
Like you're trying to survive and it makes you a regular human being, right?
No facts.
Apparently they're trying to take bullying away.
And I'm like, I'm like, these kids are going to become sociopaths.
You develop a personality by being terrified, right?
That's how, no, I mean it.
Take bullying away.
No.
It's really funny.
That's what, I'm going to send my kids.
They're trying to take bullying out of the schools though.
I did read that.
They need, you have to bring bullying back because that's really where you're
like.
That's what we're built on.
I need through like a, like Darwinism to find something to survive.
You're like, I'm going to get really good at rap.
And I was like, I'm like, I have to do something.
You gotta be funny.
I have to be funny.
Facts.
I fucking feel you.
Right?
So like, if you send your kids to one of these goddamn $60,000 a year schools,
where they're told that they're amazing, they're going to be fucking sociopaths.
Facts.
You have to tell them that they suck and the teacher has to be a loser going
through a divorce.
Yes.
Okay.
That's how we got here.
That's, sorry, that's my rant on schools.
Um, no, but like you were also in writer's programs and stuff like that too.
Yeah.
Right?
Like the fucking, um, Jewish Student Alliance.
Dude, Jewish Student Alliance was more for the pizza.
There was a, there was a thing.
What, Jewish pizza?
No, dude.
In this day and age, you can't just, just act like you didn't do it.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm like, when you go to JSU, you get like, there's a dude named Mr. Katz.
He orders a whole fucking pizza.
Um, and I say whole fucking pizza.
I mean a whole fucking pizza for me.
He orders like 10 pizzas for everybody.
And then I would come in there, I would get pizza.
Um, they would, they would talk about a lot of stuff.
Israel.
I can't talk.
I don't know what they were talking about.
I don't know what they were talking about.
But what I'm saying is that.
You just like Jewish girls.
I like Jewish girls.
You like big, big ones with, big ones with skinny waist.
I want to ask a question about like your first mixtapes, like the first three.
Like, is there a freedom in like making art when you're so young?
Cause you're like not afraid of like being corny.
Is that-
I think you're afraid, I think you still have, for the kids that I know, the
kids that I know,
the kids that I grew up with.
Yeah.
Like we were all like, we already believed that we were rappers.
We weren't like gonna grow up and become rappers.
Like we were already taking everything that we did super seriously.
So I don't think that there was ever a point where I had, I damn near had more
pressure on me when I was making Acerap.
And I never really thought about it like that.
As a young person.
Yeah.
Because you believe that your existence and your identity is so based on this
thing that you, that you at least felt like you were when you were in the
comfort of like, I go to fucking school every day.
Like my mom gives me lunch money, like versus being 19, being outside, like
having to figure out a way to pay for stuff.
You like, you take it even more seriously.
But yeah, all the way back when I was in the after school programs, I was doing
like fucking, what is it called?
It was called Young Chicago Authors.
You get like prompts and like, imagine all these kids getting up and they're
doing poems about like real fucking trauma and fucking redlining.
And like, we're all like, we're those kids.
Like, but all the way back in 2010, 2009.
Yeah.
We're like the kids wearing keffias and being like vocal and being like, we
write poetry and we like, we're radical.
Like that's the kids that I grew up around.
Yeah.
And then some kids also that grew up like Lucky and Mick Jenkins and certain
people that came out of Chicago that like,
you know what I'm saying?
Like it was a very, very diverse, like group of people that were in the like
after school shit that I was in rapping and stuff as a young age, but everybody
took it super serious.
Right.
Because there's such a, there's like a kind of a sweet naivety about being a
kid where you're like, I'm a real rapper.
I really believe in this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I believe in this.
I feel like, I think a lot about like with music, like it's like for like Nas
made Illimatic when he was 17, right?
Yeah.
And it must be like, there's a freedom in expressing yourself as a young person
that might like, you know, what's like, you're not afraid of like, maybe I'm
going to fuck up something or something.
Like, you know what I think it is.
And no, you're right.
It is a freedom in that you don't have certain knowledge that you, you know,
think of as, as fact or like a, or a restrictions or boundaries about what you
put out or what you say or how you say it or when you drop it.
When you're a kid, cause there's this little thing in the back of your head
that's like, you know, this shit might not work out, you know, and not in a,
not as, and like how I just did it.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
As this gesture, like, oh, this shit might not work out.
So I'm going to do what I'm going to do.
But like, I don't got kids.
I don't got, you know what I'm saying?
No real responsibilities.
I haven't tasted the success yet.
So.
Stand up is the opposite.
Yeah.
You don't like most, most great standups get great.
Like after 40, like it's very rare.
I've heard that before.
It's very rare for a young person to be like, like Chappelle was a phenom.
Yeah.
At like, he was a child.
At like 18.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I started stand up in DC where he started to stand up.
You know, Chappelle's my mentor.
He's your, he's your Aristotle.
That's my real life mentor.
Yep.
He's your, your, uh.
The toga man.
He's your toga man.
Mm-hmm.
He's your number one.
Yeah.
What has he taught you?
A lot of things.
A lot of like jokes that like, if I repeat them, I'll get canceled.
But like, he's very, very like.
No, but say it's a quote.
Yeah.
All right.
So Dave Chappelle was talking about, no, I'm just joking.
No, but like, he's like, I met him in 20, I think 14.
He had a show before he did the Netflix deal in Chicago.
Yeah.
And we bought tickets.
He invited me backstage, me and like my whole team.
And we stayed there like smoking cigarettes and joking around the piano for
like, till like
five in the morning.
And we stayed connected through that.
He was at my wedding.
He's like, you know, knows my kids.
I like this.
I was just at his 50th last year in New York.
Like, I like this is like somebody that I really, really look up to.
But what he taught me and what I think really shines through in the album is
that like, one
of the most important things that you have is self-determination and being able
to define
who you are and what you're going to do.
And like, we don't always talk about it because it was so long ago.
How old are you, by the way?
I'm 32.
I'm 38.
So, okay.
So, do you remember when they blackballed him though?
He was my favorite.
I remember when he went to Durban.
Like.
But they didn't call it going to Durban.
They called it going to Africa.
And there's a sensationalizing part of it.
And people said he was on crack.
And they said he was on crack.
Yeah.
Even though he's a devout Muslim and never smoked crack.
Well, beyond that, he was the funniest guy in the world.
But he, but he just made a decision.
It's a very brave thing.
And that's what I'm saying.
Sometimes you make a decision or a left turn and media can be strong enough to
push you
in a direction where you feel like you're not in control anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
Even though you're literally taking control.
Hollywood likes to do that to black people.
Yeah.
And people period, kind of.
No, no.
I think black guys.
I appreciate you saying that.
I mean, I don't know.
But you're probably right.
I mean, it's a, it's a, yeah.
I mean, he's talked about it before too.
Did he give you that type of advice?
He's like, if shit gets too hot, just like take time to yourself.
He talked to me, like he talks in metaphors and I don't want to butcher it.
But he talked about this thing about taking your ball and going home.
And the metaphor was about.
Classic.
You go to the.
The classic, take your ball and go home.
You, you go to the court, you play.
Everybody wants to play with you and use your basketball.
And then when they start playing by weird rules and hacking and fouling you and
doing all that shit.
You take your ball and you go home.
Cause they could find another ball, but is it going to be the same ball?
Hell no.
I don't know.
So they're going to wait till you come back and ball out like Jordan wearing a
four or five.
And that same spot's going to be there for you.
But you have to be strong enough to walk off and take your ball.
That was one of the things he told me in 2019 that like.
So, but he said a bunch of things.
He said this thing about that.
I always quote about the yearbook photos.
So he says like albums, whether it's a, you know, music album or comedy album,
these albums are yearbook photos.
They're not the photo of you as a human, even though as an artist, you want to
do that.
You want to create your life's work every time.
It's like where I'm at in eighth grade.
It's where you're at in eighth grade.
I was busted.
But it's important to take that yearbook photo because that's what you are.
You're a documentarian.
Yeah.
Your whole power is your voice and being able to say this thing happened.
So you have to take those yearbook photos so that, you know, you're a 38 year
old self.
You're 48 years.
You're throughout your life.
You can look back and people can get all these pictures of you at different
times.

Chance The Rapper Talks Dave Chappelle

So you got in trouble, and then you wrote your first mixtape, 18 years old.
Yeah, I think I was, yeah, I was 18.
I started at the end of my high school, senior year of high school, and put it
out, I think
when I was 19.
Yeah.
And yeah, like, the influence of school and me feeling so dissociated from like,
the building
or the idea of work or the idea of these adults being teachers and not just
being regular
niggas that hated us.
They're losers.
Yeah.
Let's be honest, teachers are losers.
So just let the record show, I don't think I'm losers, you know what I mean?
They are losers.
Some of these guys we had, phew.
Oh yeah, sorry, no, my bad.
Yeah, yeah.
My teachers was losers, for sure.
They were losers.
I thought you meant teachers in general.
Back in the day, back in the, I'm talking back in the day.
I'm talking in...
Uh-huh.
1943, 1944.
In antiquity.
Okay.
I'm talking about, like, fucking...
Stone Age.
I'm talking about...
Hmm.
I love saying I'm talking about, and you ad-lib, it sounds like a song to me.
Go ahead.
This is a track right now.
I was going to say, like, Aristotle.
Okay.
Pedophile.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let's twist.
Let's make a pivot.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Um...
Let's go...
He was a teacher though, right?
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Okay.
Because of Miletus, right?
They...
What used to happen was one person would teach one person, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So you get that one-on-one education.
A mentor.
And typically it's your father, but yes, or you go to a mentor who's a
philosopher, and
they teach you one-on-one what the game is.
Yeah.
And now we have a standardized education where we send 30 random kids into a
room to sit
all day with an adult who just got a divorce.
Yeah.
And so they owe nothing to this child.
They don't think that, you know, and it's not this child, it's 30 childs, and
next year
they'll have another 30 child.
So it's like, and I should be saying children, but you gave me this.
Childs, whatever.
Come on, dude.
The point that I'm making though is like, it's a, I think the issues with
teachers
are that they're overwhelmed and they're human beings.
So when they're, you know what I'm saying?
Getting fucking, uh, fucking markers thrown at them and TikTok challenged all
over, like,
they all, at a certain point they like, they check out.
And I think that, you know, back in the day, post Stone Age, pre-1941, there
was a lot
more, um, you know, like direct education or at least like more sizable.
To just be with one adult guy wearing a fucking toga, that'd be annoying.
No, that would be whack.
That would be whack.
I want girls to be there and kind of try to be funny.
You could have a girl mentor, girls could teach you too.
No, but you're not, but you can't, I mean, I guess, what I'm saying is, is like
a school
socializes you, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The fun part about school is that you like, you're terrified to get beat, like
get called
gay when you're in sixth grade.
Like you're trying to survive and it makes you a regular human being, right?
No facts.
Apparently they're trying to take bullying away.
And I'm like, I'm like, these kids are going to become sociopaths.
You develop a personality by being terrified, right?
That's how, no, I mean it.
Take bullying away.
No.
It's really funny.
That's what, I'm going to send my kids.
They're trying to take bullying out of the schools though.
I did read that.
They need, you have to bring bullying back because that's really where you're
like.
That's what we're built on.
I need through like a, like Darwinism to find something to survive.
You're like, I'm going to get really good at rap.
And I was like, I'm like, I have to do something.
You gotta be funny.
I have to be funny.
Facts.
I fucking feel you.
Right?
So like, if you send your kids to one of these goddamn $60,000 a year schools,
where they're told that they're amazing, they're going to be fucking sociopaths.
Facts.
You have to tell them that they suck and the teacher has to be a loser going
through a divorce.
Yes.
Okay.
That's how we got here.
That's, sorry, that's my rant on schools.
Um, no, but like you were also in writer's programs and stuff like that too.
Yeah.
Right?
Like the fucking, um, Jewish Student Alliance.
Dude, Jewish Student Alliance was more for the pizza.
There was a, there was a thing.
What, Jewish pizza?
No, dude.
In this day and age, you can't just, just act like you didn't do it.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm like, when you go to JSU, you get like, there's a dude named Mr. Katz.
He orders a whole fucking pizza.
Um, and I say whole fucking pizza.
I mean a whole fucking pizza for me.
He orders like 10 pizzas for everybody.
And then I would come in there, I would get pizza.
Um, they would, they would talk about a lot of stuff.
Israel.
I can't talk.
I don't know what they were talking about.
I don't know what they were talking about.
But what I'm saying is that.
You just like Jewish girls.
I like Jewish girls.
You like big, big ones with, big ones with skinny waist.
I want to ask a question about like your first mixtapes, like the first three.
Like, is there a freedom in like making art when you're so young?
Cause you're like not afraid of like being corny.
Is that-
I think you're afraid, I think you still have, for the kids that I know, the
kids that I know,
the kids that I grew up with.
Yeah.
Like we were all like, we already believed that we were rappers.
We weren't like gonna grow up and become rappers.
Like we were already taking everything that we did super seriously.
So I don't think that there was ever a point where I had, I damn near had more
pressure on me when I was making Acerap.
And I never really thought about it like that.
As a young person.
Yeah.
Because you believe that your existence and your identity is so based on this
thing that you, that you at least felt like you were when you were in the
comfort of like, I go to fucking school every day.
Like my mom gives me lunch money, like versus being 19, being outside, like
having to figure out a way to pay for stuff.
You like, you take it even more seriously.
But yeah, all the way back when I was in the after school programs, I was doing
like fucking, what is it called?
It was called Young Chicago Authors.
You get like prompts and like, imagine all these kids getting up and they're
doing poems about like real fucking trauma and fucking redlining.
And like, we're all like, we're those kids.
Like, but all the way back in 2010, 2009.
Yeah.
We're like the kids wearing keffias and being like vocal and being like, we
write poetry and we like, we're radical.
Like that's the kids that I grew up around.
Yeah.
And then some kids also that grew up like Lucky and Mick Jenkins and certain
people that came out of Chicago that like,
you know what I'm saying?
Like it was a very, very diverse, like group of people that were in the like
after school shit that I was in rapping and stuff as a young age, but everybody
took it super serious.
Right.
Because there's such a, there's like a kind of a sweet naivety about being a
kid where you're like, I'm a real rapper.
I really believe in this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I believe in this.
I feel like, I think a lot about like with music, like it's like for like Nas
made Illimatic when he was 17, right?
Yeah.
And it must be like, there's a freedom in expressing yourself as a young person
that might like, you know, what's like, you're not afraid of like, maybe I'm
going to fuck up something or something.
Like, you know what I think it is.
And no, you're right.
It is a freedom in that you don't have certain knowledge that you, you know,
think of as, as fact or like a, or a restrictions or boundaries about what you
put out or what you say or how you say it or when you drop it.
When you're a kid, cause there's this little thing in the back of your head
that's like, you know, this shit might not work out, you know, and not in a,
not as, and like how I just did it.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
As this gesture, like, oh, this shit might not work out.
So I'm going to do what I'm going to do.
But like, I don't got kids.
I don't got, you know what I'm saying?
No real responsibilities.
I haven't tasted the success yet.
So.
Stand up is the opposite.
Yeah.
You don't like most, most great standups get great.
Like after 40, like it's very rare.
I've heard that before.
It's very rare for a young person to be like, like Chappelle was a phenom.
Yeah.
At like, he was a child.
At like 18.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I started stand up in DC where he started to stand up.
You know, Chappelle's my mentor.
He's your, he's your Aristotle.
That's my real life mentor.
Yep.
He's your, your, uh.
The toga man.
He's your toga man.
Mm-hmm.
He's your number one.
Yeah.
What has he taught you?
A lot of things.
A lot of like jokes that like, if I repeat them, I'll get canceled.
But like, he's very, very like.
No, but say it's a quote.
Yeah.
All right.
So Dave Chappelle was talking about, no, I'm just joking.
No, but like, he's like, I met him in 20, I think 14.
He had a show before he did the Netflix deal in Chicago.
Yeah.
And we bought tickets.
He invited me backstage, me and like my whole team.
And we stayed there like smoking cigarettes and joking around the piano for
like, till like
five in the morning.
And we stayed connected through that.
He was at my wedding.
He's like, you know, knows my kids.
I like this.
I was just at his 50th last year in New York.
Like, I like this is like somebody that I really, really look up to.
But what he taught me and what I think really shines through in the album is
that like, one
of the most important things that you have is self-determination and being able
to define
who you are and what you're going to do.
And like, we don't always talk about it because it was so long ago.
How old are you, by the way?
I'm 32.
I'm 38.
So, okay.
So, do you remember when they blackballed him though?
He was my favorite.
I remember when he went to Durban.
Like.
But they didn't call it going to Durban.
They called it going to Africa.
And there's a sensationalizing part of it.
And people said he was on crack.
And they said he was on crack.
Yeah.
Even though he's a devout Muslim and never smoked crack.
Well, beyond that, he was the funniest guy in the world.
But he, but he just made a decision.
It's a very brave thing.
And that's what I'm saying.
Sometimes you make a decision or a left turn and media can be strong enough to
push you
in a direction where you feel like you're not in control anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
Even though you're literally taking control.
Hollywood likes to do that to black people.
Yeah.
And people period, kind of.
No, no.
I think black guys.
I appreciate you saying that.
I mean, I don't know.
But you're probably right.
I mean, it's a, it's a, yeah.
I mean, he's talked about it before too.
Did he give you that type of advice?
He's like, if shit gets too hot, just like take time to yourself.
He talked to me, like he talks in metaphors and I don't want to butcher it.
But he talked about this thing about taking your ball and going home.
And the metaphor was about.
Classic.
You go to the.
The classic, take your ball and go home.
You, you go to the court, you play.
Everybody wants to play with you and use your basketball.
And then when they start playing by weird rules and hacking and fouling you and
doing all that shit.
You take your ball and you go home.
Cause they could find another ball, but is it going to be the same ball?
Hell no.
I don't know.
So they're going to wait till you come back and ball out like Jordan wearing a
four or five.
And that same spot's going to be there for you.
But you have to be strong enough to walk off and take your ball.
That was one of the things he told me in 2019 that like.
So, but he said a bunch of things.
He said this thing about that.
I always quote about the yearbook photos.
So he says like albums, whether it's a, you know, music album or comedy album,
these albums are yearbook photos.
They're not the photo of you as a human, even though as an artist, you want to
do th